Cleaning House
by temporalgambit
Summary: In which Rin organizes the dorm, discovers some interesting new information, and embarrasses his idiot nerdlord of a boyfriend.


"…What are you doing?" Sousuke asked, closing the door behind himself and raising an eyebrow at his roommate—who was currently elbow-deep in Sousuke's own desk drawer.

"Cleaning!" Rin announced, flashing him a cheeky grin. "I just organized my desk, so I figured I'd start on yours, too. That's okay, right?"

"Uh…" Sousuke thought about it for a moment "…yeah, sure, I guess," he concluded. "Just give me my laptop; I have an essay I'm supposed to be working on."

"Sure," Rin nodded, pulling the computer out from underneath a stack of books and handing it to him.

Sousuke thanked him, then, seeing as how his desk was currently occupied, took up residence cross-legged on Rin's bunk. They sat in relative quiet for a while—nothing but the sound of typing and shuffling papers disturbing the peace, until Rin abruptly broke the silence.

"Hey, Sousuke…what's this?" he asked, unearthing a small object from beneath some papers in the bottom drawer.

Sousuke looked up from his laptop. While initially Rin hadn't really been planning to make a big deal out of his discovery, the way his roommate's eyes suddenly widened told him he'd be a fool to pass up the opportunity.

"I—it's—stop going through my stuff!" Sousuke stammered, trying (and failing) to school his expression back into its previous passivity.

"Hey, hey," Rin teased, "it's none of my business, I suppose. I just never pinned you for the kind of guy to play with _dolls_ , is all. But to each his own! I have to say, though…" he paused, studying the offending object more closely, "this looks an awful lot like _you_. It's got the right eye color and everything…I guess that gives a whole new meaning to the term 'playing with yourself,' doesn't it?"

Sousuke's ears were positively _burning_ red, and he hastily stood to snatch the plush from Rin's hands, tossing it back in the drawer and slamming it shut. "I take it back. I'll organize my _own_ desk, thank you," he muttered, returning to his position on the lower bunk.

"Aw, don't be like that," Rin implored, "I was just kidding." He reopened the drawer to retrieve the toy. "Actually, it's kind of—oh?" he stopped, suddenly noticing _another_ item in the drawer beneath the first, "…Is this…?"

"I said don't—" Rin pulled the second plush out, and Sousuke froze, blush creeping from the tips of his ears all the way across the bridge of his nose.

"Sousuke…" Rin began, voice as emotionless as his face, "…is this supposed to be…me?" he held up the little red-haired doll.

Sousuke nodded meekly. "Uh, yeah…" he cleared his throat awkwardly. Then, realizing the vast potential for misinterpretation, he quickly added, "But it's nothing weird, I swear!"

Rin quirked an eyebrow. "Then why…?"

Sousuke ran a hand across the back of his neck, refusing to make eye contact. "Do you really want to know?"

"Uh, _yeah_ I want to know. That's why I asked."

Sighing deeply, he relented. "Okay. Fine. Just promise you won't laugh."

"Deal."

"Okay…" he took another deep breath, "So, back in middle school, after the second time I hurt my shoulder, I got kinda low. PT was taking forever, I wasn't making the kind of progress I thought I should be making, and I was sort of starting to realize that maybe there wasn't a way around this."

"So you started making dolls?"

"Let me finish!" Sousuke glared. "I was still hanging around the swim club a lot, even though I wasn't cleared to do much more than float yet, and my coach noticed. I think he knew it was more than just wanting to be around the team, so he eventually talked me into helping with swim lessons—just like, as an assistant or whatever, since I couldn't really swim myself."

"Oh, I think Makoto was actually doing the same thing not long ago. Though I wouldn't have guessed _you'd_ have any interest in looking after kids."

Sousuke shrugged. "I didn't really, at the time, but it ended up being kinda cool. It gave me something to do instead of sit around feeling sorry for myself, which was sort of what I needed…but anyway, there was this kid—a girl—she must've been like, what, ten or eleven? And she was always kind of like…looking at me. And I figured 'okay, yeah, she's young, maybe she has a crush or something.'"

"Vain, much?" Rin jabbed.

Sousuke's frown deepened. "If you don't want me to tell you, I won't tell you."

"Okay, sorry, sorry," Rin held his hands up placatingly, "I won't interrupt anymore. Keep going."

"Fine. So she was always staring, right? Even when coach was explaining something and I was just like…passing out kickboards, she was always giving me this _look_. Then one day after practice she came up to me, and I was thinking 'okay, this could get pretty awkward,' but then instead of whatever weird love confession I was expecting, she just asked me, 'Why do you always look so sad?' And I was…I didn't know what to tell her. I mean, I thought I was doing an okay job of keeping everything to myself, but then this ten-year-old girl just…" he trailed off, staring somewhere off into the distance.

"…And?" Rin prodded, bringing him back down to earth "What did you tell her?"

Sousuke blinked. "I…I couldn't come up with a lie fast enough, so I told her the truth. Or, a condensed version, anyway. That I had this friend that I wanted to swim with," at this he looked away, "but that I had gotten hurt and wasn't sure if I'd be able to swim with him ever again. And then she got kinda quiet, but then she asked if she could see my friend, and I was confused, but I told her sure, that I'd bring a picture next time. I kind of thought she'd forget about it, but the next day she was waiting for me by the door, so I showed her—it was the one your mom took of us after we went ice skating for the first time, when I sprained my wrist, and you were wearing that hideous sweater—"

"I liked that sweater!"

"I thought you said you were done interrupting?"

Rin pursed his lips into a thin line, but didn't say anything else.

" _Anyway_ ," Sousuke continued, "So I showed her, and she was just like, 'Oh.' And then she thanked me and went home. And I thought that was the end of it, because she stopped staring and never said anything about it again. But then, on the last day of practice, right before school started again, she came up to me with a little brown paper bag, and she was like, 'I made these for you. My mom helped a little, but I did most of the sewing myself. I'm sorry you can't swim with your friend anymore, but maybe these will help. You can't really take them in the water, but mom said you could pretend and that would be almost as good.' And she handed me the bag and ran off before I could see what it was, or even thank her. And that's what it was," he concluded. "It's kinda dumb, I guess, but I just sort of thought…I've had them all this time, I figured I should bring them with me. Sort of like good luck, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't really banking on you finding them." The blush returned. "Sorry for the boring story."

" _Boring?!"_ Rin gasped, "How could you say that's _boring?_ That's like…the kind of stuff they write movies about."

"…I don't think so."

"Well, okay, at least sappy magazine articles, then."

Sousuke rolled his eyes.

"Anyway," Rin cleared his throat, "I'd say I'm sorry for going through your stuff, but A) your desk is a disaster zone that you'd never get around to cleaning yourself, and B) I'm kind of…really glad you told me that."

"Seriously?"

Rin nodded emphatically. "Uh-huh! Not only does it explain the dolls, but now I have 100 percent definitive proof that Sousuke Yamazaki is, in fact, the softest, most sentimental ball of fluff the island of Japan has ever seen."

"Shut up," Sousuke mock punched him, though he was smiling a little. "Don't you have cleaning to get back to?"

"Oh, so _now_ he wants me to clean," Rin retorted, grinning widely and standing up to resume his task.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a while after that—Rin continuing with his organizing, Sousuke resuming his essay-writing, until Rin finally straightened up and stretched.

"That's probably good enough for now," he declared, stepping back to admire his work. "I think I'm gonna go get dinner, you wanna come?"

"Yeah, just let me finish this. I'll meet you down there in a few," Sousuke waved him off, not looking up at the sound of Rin's exit.

When he finally _did_ look up, however, his heart skipped a beat or two. There, on top of the arrangement of textbooks on his newly-arranged desk, were the two dolls, side by side. Stuck to the book by their feet was a post-it note, which upon closer inspection read, ' _I'd still love you even if these were creepy masturbation dolls, you big dork. –Rin'_

"That son of a—" Sousuke muttered, though he couldn't keep the corners of his mouth from quirking upward, just a little. He took one last look at the plushes, smile widening a little more, before flicking off the light and following his roommate downstairs.


End file.
